From the Mouths of Babes...

I ran a story in my sports cast this week about a nine year-old boy who wrote an essay about verbal abuse in minor hockey. In the essay, he wishes for parents to stop yelling criticisms and for young players to be treated with respect. His essay is called “The Magic Hockey Helmet” and it can be viewed on YouTube. If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly suggest you watch. Effectively, the boy holds up a mirror to obscene and obnoxious “hockey parents” everywhere, in the hope they will see how silly they are. If there is anything that can stop the infantile tradition of raging from the stands at a minor league game, it’s this kid’s monologue.

But I fear, as poignant as the essay is, it may be too late. Openly embarrassing and harassing hockey players is a long standing tradition in Canada. Walk into any arena, on any given night, and you will witness frustrated parents and fans shouting at the players. It’s the same kind of behaviour that has been going on for decades. Hockey is our un-official national sport and the beholder of our national pride. It makes people crazy when it’s not played to perfection: whether that player is 9 years-old or 19. The criticisms hurled at kids trying to learn and love a beautiful sport, are blindly seen as merely helpful or encouraging. Canada’s international success as a hockey nation and the increasingly talented junior players our country produces only validates these verbal assaults. After all, even Sidney Crosby had a less than perfect hockey dad in the stands at his minor league games, and look how he turned out.

I have a feeling that as a nation of overt hockey critics, we’re losing more than we’re gaining. What about the “Sid the Kids” that could have been? The ones who leave the sport because public ridicule at the hands of their own parents is just too high a cost to pay for the sport they love and the celebrity they could earn? Or what about the players, who do well, but not great enough for ma or pa hockey parent, and then in turn have young hockey players of their own and figure, even more vocal “encouragement” is what it will take to make their kids better than themselves? It’s an endless cycle. Just as spousal and family violence is a cycle. Abuse is abuse no matter what environment it happens in.

So, if all those “It’s Just a Game” ads don’t work, and all the Fair Play Codes in the world continue to fail those brave enough to get on the ice in the first place, and even if the “Magic Helmet” essay can’t subdue parents into rational and civilized fans, then maybe hockey shouldn’t be Canada’s proudest export. Because it’s becoming a sport built on child abuse. And that is much more un-Canadian than a kid missing a pass at a minor league hockey game.